


Bond

by WahlBuilder



Series: Fang and Claw [3]
Category: The Technomancer (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Love, M/M, Mild Gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-01
Updated: 2019-05-01
Packaged: 2020-02-15 16:03:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18672964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WahlBuilder/pseuds/WahlBuilder
Summary: Viktor's mission goes sideways because of his bondmark.





	Bond

**Author's Note:**

> With my love, as always, to my trashcan comrades =*

The leech he’s been carefully stalking is powerful and dangerous and cruel, and very cautious, her MO is finding lonely people, new to the town, no connections. They are courted, seduced — and then they turn up not only drained, but obviously brutalized before they are killed.

And of course, Viktor uses himself as bait.

It’s a long game, the leech is very careful, so Viktor has to make his legend perfect, and it’s a mission for weeks, not for a couple of days.

The mission is going fairly well: he doesn’t let the leech close at first, oh no, the lonely artist is cautious, of course, in a new environment, but thaws to his new friend... They get closer, things moving according to the plan, and the next step is allowing the leech to seduce him (several times), and they are kissing and the leech starts undressing him — and sees the bondmark.

He manages to explain it away, but the leech is still tense and their “date” is broken off, and when the target leaves, Viktor allows himself to rage. He hopes Anton feels it, too, across their bond. He hopes Anton feels it’s directed at him, it’s because of him...

It is a silent rage, he won’t destroy his hotel room, but so powerful it turns the blood in his veins into acid.

“What did I do?” Anton asks quietly.

Viktor turns to him. Anton looks so hurt, and his hurt is so quiet compared to Viktor’s ice-cold rage, and his hurt is so _naked_.

“I’ve nearly lost my mark,” Viktor says, his throat raw. “Because of you. Because of the bondmark. And I couldn’t stop thinking about you, I sat with her and everything I could think was _you_ , how much I missed you, and wanted it to be you instead of her, and I had to think about you when she kissed me, because otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to continued the masquerade. What did you do to me?”

Viktor strides to him, puts hands on his shoulders — but Anton be feeling what he wants, what he intends to do, and Anton turns his face away, murmuring, “No, Vitya, I don’t want it like this, don’t want it when you are like this, don’t want you doing this to yourself...”

And Viktor drops his hands and slides them around Anton, and he’s trembling and still angry, but also — afraid.

Anton’s touch drains some of that fear away.

It is not-exactly-a-fight over the bondmark and the nearly lost target (but both of them know it’s not about the target and not about the bondmark, even), and Anton manages to talk Viktor into having some rest.

Viktor wakes up groggy, and alone, and of course, what else did he expect, Anton wouldn’t—

The reek of blood hits him so hard he barely manages to convince his stomach from flipping.

And there is Anton, leaning on the doorframe in the darkness, holding something...

“I didn’t know what proof would suffice,” Anton says — rasps, his voice all wrong, his breathing heavy. “So I’ve brought this,” he lifts his hand, and this is what’s reeking so terribly. Viktor stares at the head of his target. It’s not bleeding, but there is a distinct smell of blood in the air, so why...

He stumbles off the bed, to Anton, swallows. “Tosha, where are you hurt?” He doesn’t recognize his voice.

Anton’s eyes glint, like eyes of a cat, hooded, pupils blown wide. “Doesn’t matter.”

“ _Tosha_.”

Anton lowers the head on the nearest table, like a grotesque decoration, and his movements are very slow. “The bitch had a silver knife. I’ll be fine.” He moves as though to leave, and Viktor grabs his hand.

(He doesn’t flinch at the sticky sensation, nor does he flinch from the hard texture of claws.)

“I’m so angry with you right now. It’s my mission.” And even though he says that, even though there _is_ anger... They can deal with it later, and he hopes that Anton feels his worry, too.

“Well, the mission’s over now, hunter. You don’t have to keep your cover anymore, you don’t have to use yourself anymore.”

“It is for me?” It’s so... unbelievable. There must be another explanation.

Anton doesn’t reply, of course he doesn’t, only tugs at his hand. “Let me go, Vitya. There’s still too much violence in me. Don’t want to hurt you.”

He can feel it, too. The hunger for violence, and for something more. To tear the world apart and to consume it — to quieten that ache inside.

He knows it, too.

He presses himself to Anton and slides his hands into his jacket. Anton sucks in a breath sharply as Viktor finds the cut on his back. Still wet. Anton is so hot to the touch.

“Tosha.”

Anton sighs into his shoulder, and the hunger doesn’t fade, but some of the tension does. “Vitya.”

“Though I’m angry,” he murmurs, stroking over the cut. At the press of his fingers, it bleeds more, and Anton hisses. “I’d let you do to me whatever you want, right now.”

Anton growls. “Vitya.”

“I’d let you feed off of me, and I’d let you have me in every way possible, tear my flesh, shatter my bones...”

“ _Vitya_.”

“You are not the only one hungry here.”

Finally, Anton moves, his arms closing around Viktor, too, as he sighs again.

“Let me take a look at the cut, Tosha,” Viktor asks. If Anton refuses, he will let him leave, even though he doesn’t want to.

“All right.”

They don’t let go of each other for a few moments more. Then Viktor leads to the bathroom, switches the light on.

Anton is a terrible mess. The place where the fight happened must look like a slaughterhouse, of the worst kind — but Viktor has seen more nightmarish things. He pushes it aside, because what’s more important now is that he can’t read Anton.

Anton’s movements are heavy, the way he gets when he still craves a fight but has to hold back through the sheer effort of will — but that is all. His face is unreadable, his posture when he sits down on a stool is stiff but blank. And the bond has that endless, roaring abyss of hunger — but that is _all_.

Viktor takes the jacket off (it needs a lot of scrubbing), and Anton doesn’t try to stop him. Even helps him a little. The shirt underneath, of course, should go into trash bin. If Viktor manages to peel it away.

“Tosha, I need to cut it off and then you need a wash.”

“Thanks.”

He rolls his eyes. “The smell doesn’t bother me. But I can’t see the extent of the damage.”

“It will heal.”

“Indulge me?”

He can’t read anything even in Anton’s eyes. It is... disturbing. Wrong.

“Fine. Cut it off, then.”

He gets scissors, repositions Anton to be able to crouch behind him. Sleeves are the easiest part: the jacket protected Anton from the spray of his adversary — but the knife went right through. It must have been very sharp or enhanced in some way, because Viktor knows well just how sturdy Anton’s jacket is. (Anton once said it is made from a vampire’s hide, and Viktor hasn’t been able to check whether it’s true or not.)

The blood gluing the shirt to Anton’s skin is Anton’s own.

He doesn’t like how quiet Tosha is while he’s working. How deep and heavy his breathing is, and how hot his skin is. Viktor manages to cut most of the shirt off.

“Shower now, Tosha? Do you want it hot?” Though he doubts Anton can adequately feel heat now.

“Doesn’t matter.”

Viktor suppresses a sigh. Then drops a kiss to Anton’s shoulder — but Tosha remains rigid and unresponsive.

“How much did you bleed?”

“I won’t faint.”

“What I’m saying is, do you need to feed?”

“I always want to.”

This is getting nowhere.

“I’m sorry about the mark,” Anton says in a tone as unreadable as his entire being now. “I’ll ask whether it can be rid of.”

Viktor bites his tongue to not say _Don’t you dare take the bond away!._

“Was she... a ‘research’ participant, too?”

Viktor frowns. “No. She was a target. A serial killer.”

“She was planning to hurt you, Vitya. To charm you and use you and hurt you.”

“I know. I wouldn’t have let her.”

He doesn’t like the sight of Anton’s magnificent tattoos marred with blood. But at least the cut seems to have stopped bleeding.

Viktor stands up and slides his palms over Anton’s shoulders. He’s definitely running a fever, more than he does when he’s healing. “Tosha, I can’t feel you now and I can’t read you. Tell me what you’re thinking about?”

Anton looks up. His pupils are still blown wide, and his eyes are more blood than champagne. “You. About you. Do you want to end all this?”

His heart clenches and he’s so acutely aware of his own lungs he can barely force himself to breathe. And he can’t measure Anton’s thoughts, he’s so opaque now, Viktor can’t just take whatever Anton thinks of it, and turn it back, place the responsibility on Anton.

“Not... now,” he manages, his tongue thick in his mouth. “It wouldn’t be—”

“You don’t have to invent reasons. ‘Not now’, I get it.”

He curls his fingers on Anton’s shoulders. He’s so scared he feels like the ground is slipping from under him, and he needs Anton to understand...

“Tosha—”

“Not now. Maybe later. I would have been worried if you’d said ‘No, never’, because, you know, I might lose my fucking mind one day and you’d have to kill me, or you’d finally get bored of me, or I’d lose control and hurt you, though, wait, we’ve been through that, but maybe I’d hurt you even more than before and you’d finally snap; or maybe, I don’t know, I break your favorite mug and you decide, that’s it, we are over, or I set the HQ on fire, or—”

_“Tosha. Shut. Up.”_

Anton is finally silent as Viktor presses his face to his shoulder, shaking.

“See? I made you cry, sweet thing.”

“Will you _stop_ talking?”

A hand scratches the back of his head. No claws, though. “You asked me to tell you what I was thinking about.”

He swallows and takes a shuddering breath, then lets go of Anton and leans over the sink to wash his face.

He stares at himself in the mirror over the sink, and he feels like anything might tip him over the edge again. He’s just tired, stressed because of the mission gone sideways, and waking up to a reek of blood and worse is not good for overall health either, and it’s that...

The thought of losing Anton makes him feel like the world loses its contour. Like a painting that is slightly chaotic and incomplete, but possessed of some beauty... Like the paint has become runny suddenly. Like someone threw solvent on it, and he can’t salvage it. Even the canvas are unraveling already.

He frowns at the strange thoughts.

A hand touches the small of his back. “I’m sorry, Vitya. I’m tired of picking up the pieces of you over and over. They are the ones doing it to you — but you are doing it to yourself, too. I’m tired of feeling powerless to protect you, and of your denying my protection.”

_“They”?_

“Then leave,” he croaks. He won’t cry again, he won’t, it’s exhaustion, he has to control himself.

“I don’t want to. I love you too much and I’m too selfish to deny myself your existence in my life.”

The hand moves off him, and he’s turning to Anton, _What did you just say, did you say ‘lo—’_

But Anton has turned the water on in the shower and is trying to peel away his jeans, the waistband soaked with his blood that slid down his back. “Fucking hell, if we have to cut my jeans, too, I swear I will fucking...” Anton’s words dissolve into more cursing in several languages.

Viktor starts laughing. He laughs and laughs and he knows it’s hysterical but he just can’t stop.

They are, in a word, fucked.


End file.
